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Friday, August 12, 2011

Homeless Signs

The other day, Annie and I were stopped at a stoplight. I started laughing hysterically for what seemed like no reason at all. She gave me the 'what the fuck is wrong with you?' face. Anytime something like this happens, it's always a longer story than you would expect. Especially since I had just rapidly thought about a few things in mere seconds that culminated in my laughing outbreak Here is what happened.

A homeless lady had a sign that she was holding up beside the intersection. (Homelessness is ridiculous in the Bay Area.) It said something like "Your going to have a better day if you give me $$". My first thought was: come on, lady, that's the wrong 'your' (*you're). Then I realized that I was truly an awful person for judging a homeless person's grammar. She probably has more important things to think about, like what fad diet is going to help her drop those last few pounds for bikini season. Then I went on to think that I didn't care. If homeless people know how to write in English, they had to have learned it somewhere, and that they shouldn't expect people to give them money if their English is that horrific. Then I started laughing, because I realized that, once again, I was judging a homeless person for not carefully spell-checking their cardboard sign. (Though spell-check doesn't work for grammar errors.)

So, there's no surprise when I tell you that I have urges to make fun of homeless people's signs. If I had more money, I would work it out to make passive aggressive signs that mock their signs and stand next to them. However, I'm lazy and poor, so I'll just give you a glimpse of what I'm thinking, and you can imagine how awesome the whole series would be.

Please don't stare at me with sad eyes when I'm exploiting you.

There was a guy in SF last weekend that had a sign that read "Let's be honest, I'm saving for a hooker." It made me giggle, and I thought that was worth $1. I didn't give him one, though, for 2 reasons. 1) That'd be a really shitty day for a hooker. 2) "Honest" homeless signs like this have been popping up alot lately, so I didn't deem it creative enough.

You're the second person to post that today. In middle school, when I was told to never use 'a lot' in English class, I avoided it. I avoided it for years. Then, one day I realized that I was avoiding a word that I wanted to use. A word that everyone understood the meaning of. From that day forward, I started using 'a lot'. Since then, I decided that since I'm already using a word that I regard as grammatically correct as 'aint', I might as well make it one word. I'll never claim to be a perfect grammaticist; I certainly make mistakes. I'm just an outspoken defender of the principles that I know. Too many people let things slide, because it's polite. I'm not polite.